The Battle of Mello was the decisive and largest engagement of the Peasant Jacquerie of 1358, a rebellion of peasants in the Beauvais region of France, which caused an enormous amount of damage to this wealthy region at the height of the Hundred Years' War with England. The battle was fought at almost the same time as another major battle fought at Meaux, where the Jacquerie rebels (or Jacques Bonhommes) joined the Parisian militia in assaulting a royal stronghold. The Road to Battle The rebellion in the Beauvais was the heart of Jacquerie which began on 28 May 1358 in the village of Saint-Leu d'Esserent. Although the rebellion linked to a revolt lead by Étienne Marcel in Paris, the Jacquerie was a distinct, peasant-led movement that arose in the Beauvaisis which spread to implicate Picardy, some of Normandy, Champagne and the southern Île-de-France. These peasant bands attacked surrounding houses, many of which were only occupied by women and children, the men being with an army gathering to recapture Paris from Marcel's rebellion. While some occupants were killed, the bulk of the rebellion's violence was focused on destroying noble houses and fortifications and looting or destroying their contents. The nobles’ response was furious. Nobles from across northern France sought help in Normandy from King Charles II of Navarre, some of whose troops were English mercenaries. This army moved into the Beauvais, preparing to strike at the peasants who had set up camp near Mello. Another army, 800-strong under Jean Vaillant and Pierre Gilles, was dispatched from Paris to Meaux, where they besieged the castle of Marché which contained Lady Jeanne de Bourbon, the wife of the Dauphin Charles and his daughter Jeanne, along with a large number of nobles. According to the chronicler Froissart, they were joined by Count Gaston Phoebus and Lord Jean III de Grailly returning from crusading with the Teutonic Knights . The armies were composed very differently: the peasant army under the leadership of Guillaume Cale reportedly numbered 4,000 peasants and seem to have included no participation from the Parisian forces, while the army at Meaux had a core of nearly 1,000 Parisian troops, sent by Etienne Marcel, and a large number of Jacques and other villagers who had been pressed into service by the Parisian commanders along the way. The motives of the latter for joining the uprising were mixed. Some were subsequently to claim that